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Budget 2017 at a glance

Today Nov 22 was budget day and Philip Hammond who shockingly said on national TV at the weekend that “There is no unemployment in the UK” set of tapping his red box to parliament, first for PMQs then to announce the budget.

Here then is a quick at a glance guide to what he said:

Tobacco will continue to rise 2% above RPI inflation, and the minimum excise duty will increase next year, duty on hand rolling tobacco will increase by and additional 1%

Duty on beer, wine and spirits will be frozen, duty on cheap ciders will increase under new legislation

Fuel duty rise for all petrol and diesel cars that was in place for April next year is scrapped

Vehicle excise duty on diesel cars that do not meet the latest standards will rise one band in April next year

No tax hikes for van owners

New clean air fund costing £220m will be created

HS2 will get an additional £300m

£440m electric car charging fund

£100m investment in plug in car grant

Universal Credit will see a small change in the way it is being delivered with a week reduction on waiting times, and new claims will see their housing benefit paid for the first two weeks, advance payments will be paid 100% within 5 days of applying for the benefit from January 2018.

£500m for 5G networks, fibre broadband and AI

£540m investment on electric cars and charging points

£2.3bn on research and development

NHS will get £2.8bn worth of extra funding, and £350m given now to help with winter pressures and other payments next year and 2019,

There will also be a £10bn of investments in hospitals

Further devolution powers for Manchester, and £1.7bn transport fund for mayors like Andy Burnham, which will help get many projects off the ground.

And for younger people the age is extended for a rail card up to 30-years-old.

Scotland and Wales also got big amounts of funding in this budget and an extra £650m for Northern Ireland.

Measures were introduced to make big tech companies like Apple, Google and Amazon pay tax on digital royalties relating to UK sales.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham reacted on Twitter saying “Biggest take-away from budget has to be the lack of any mention of police funding, staggering omission” in another tweet he said simply “And no mention of social care, wow!”

Education got a good amount of money from the chancellor, and preparations for brexit gets £3bn more over the next two years.

Wider support for housing with £44bn in capital loans and funding guarantees to help build 300,000 net new homes a year by sometime in the mid to late 2020’s.